keithl wrote:For a few hours, the night side of the Earth could be much brighter than the day side.

How big would a fire have to be for this to actually be the case?

Unless stated otherwise, I do not care whether a statement, by itself, constitutes a persuasive political argument. I care whether it's true.---If this post has math that doesn't work for you, use TeX the World for Firefox or Chrome

Let's assume there's life on the the nearest habitable exoplanet and that they have technology comparable to ours. If they looked at our star right now, what would they see?

Our star. Maybe something far enough out in orbit. Depending on how close they are, which is a function of how common life is. That is answer one. The same thing we see when we look at them. That is answer two.